John H. Krouse, MD, PhD

I'm excited that the 2010 Annual Meeting & OTO EXPO of the AAO-HNSF will take place in historic Boston.

I was fortunate to spend nine years in this amazing city during my medical education, and I can assure that you will find Boston to be a beautiful, inspiring, and welcoming venue!

Once again, the meeting will include a series of miniseminar symposia, oral presentations of free papers, and poster presentations that reflect the broad range of our specialty. We are continuing to expand our offerings in these areas, and will highlight an increased number of presentations in all three program formats. This year we will offer 80-plus miniseminars—a 20 percent increase in the number of these popular symposia.

Building on the initiatives we started in San Diego last year, the Academy has again invited our subspecialty societies to submit miniseminars for this year, and all have been peer-reviewed by our Program Advisory Committee (PAC). We are honored to offer 15 co-sponsored miniseminars in a broad range of content areas on this year's program, a 50 percent increase from last year. We thank those societies for sharing content and expertise with our members and guests at our Annual Meeting. These co-sponsored programs continue to showcase the best in our specialty, and demonstrate why our Annual Meeting is the world's largest gathering of otolaryngologist-head and neck surgeons. Offering a wide range of opportunities for attendees, the Scientific Program will have concurrent content in 12 meeting rooms on each of the four days at the Boston meeting.

In response to the Institute of Medicine's landmark report, Retooling for an Aging America: Building the Health Care Workforce, we are featuring a series of four timely miniseminars on issues in geriatric otolaryngology. These sessions, created with guidance from David Eibling, MD, and the Geriatric Otolaryngology Committee, will take place at the same time and location each day.

One additional program deserves special mention. In conjunction with the American Board of Otolaryngology, Mark Wax, MD, will moderate a miniseminar on "Lifelong Learning as Part of the Quality Improvement Process." It will examine the importance of ongoing education in practice—a key element in the updated Maintenance of Certification (MOC) process that begins this year.

Throw in the 300 oral and 600 poster presentations scheduled for this year and it is easy to see that our Annual Meeting offers the broadest access to current scientific and clinical information in otolaryngology-head and neck surgery of any national or international meeting.

We look forward to having you with us in Boston as we gather again to enhance our knowledge and rekindle our friendships. See you there in September!

John H. Krouse, MD, PhD
Coordinator for Scientific Program